Private Messaging App WhatsApp has added over 20 new features in the past year — including Communities, improvements to groups, better calling and voice notes. It also added more layers of privacy, on top of industry-leading default end-to-end encryption, encrypted backups, and disappearing messages — making private messaging even more private.
Here is a recap of the key features introduced:
- New Layers of Privacy
In addition to default end-to-end encryption that keeps conversations private, new layers of protection were introduced:
- Hide your online status: Control who sees your last seen and whether you’re online from privacy settings. Here’s how.
- Leave groups silently: Instead of notifying the full group when leaving, now only admins are notified.
- Accidental delete: Shared something to the wrong group, and in trying to delete quickly, hit “delete for me” by mistake? Now you can undo it.
- Communities
‘Communities’ is a feature that makes it easy for schools, local clubs and workplaces to manage their busy conversations by bringing multiple groups under one umbrella. It also gives admins powerful tools, including an announcement group, and the ability to make sub-groups on any topic.
- New Group Features
Alongside Communities, WhatsApp introduced new group messaging features, including the ability to create in-chat polls, the option to add up to 1,024 members, up from 256. It also introduced admin delete, giving admins the ability to delete problematic messages.
- Better Voice and Video Calling
More and more people are using WhatsApp to connect securely with voice and video calls. Key improvements made in 2022 were:
- 32-person calls: Do video calls with up to 32 people, four times the earlier number.
- Message or mute call participants: Long pressing on a participant will enlarge the video or audio feed and allow one to either mute or message them separately.
- Call links: Whether making a last-minute call or planning ahead, easily invite people to a group call by sharing a call link.
- In-call banner notifications: Know when someone new joins a group call.
- Better Voice Messages
Over 7 billion voice messages are sent on WhatsApp every day. In Q1 2022, WhatsApp introduced several improvements:
- Out of chat playback, enables multitask or read and respond to other messages.
- Pause/resume recording: When recording a voice message, swipe up to lock the recording button. Then hit pause and resume as many times as needed.
- Draft preview: Listen to your voice messages before sending it out.
- Remember playback: Pause a voice message and pick up where one left off.
- Fast playback: Play voice messages at 1.5x or 2x speed.
- Expressing Better
Share moments of joy, pride, even sadness on WhatsApp:
- Emoji reactions: React to a message with any emoji. Not only are they fun, they reduce the overload of messages like “yes”, “OK”, “done” in groups.
- Avatars: Create personalized avatar and use as profile photo or as one of 36 custom stickers.
- Status updates: When some adds a status, you now see A new ring with appear around profile when someone adds a status. React to the status with an emoji reaction.
- Improved Utility
WhatsApp added features to make things even easier:
- Message yourself: Send messages to yourself, so your reminders, to-dos even moments of inspiration are in one place.
- 2GB file sharing: You can now share files, photos and videos up to 2GB, a significant jump from the earlier 100MB limit.
- Migrate chats from Android to iOS and vice versa: Transfer your account information, settings, profile photo, and chat history when moving between operating systems.
Join our Telegram channel to receive latest news alert